


Only Exception

by n00blici0us



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n00blici0us/pseuds/n00blici0us
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper Potts is Tony Stark's only exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Exception

Tony Stark believed in few things, just a few, real, tangible things. He believed money could buy anything. He believed that his hands could fashion anything that he set his mind to dream. And he believed that his heart, engineered by him and Yinsen in a dank cave in Afghanistan, could power him through his life—his heart for 50 lifetimes. What he had never believed in was love.

Tony Stark didn’t do love. Love was ephemeral. Love was random synapses firing that made people do stupid things. Most importantly, love wasn’t tangible and it never lasted. It wouldn’t last 50 lifetimes. Usually, Tony was lucky if it lasted 15 minutes—a few hours if it was really passionate. Instead, he did one night stands. He did flings. He did casual relationships that inevitably degraded into fuck-buddies in his mind while it elevated to long-term boyfriend material in the mind of his paramour. Which, then, always led to epic breakups involving ducking flying missiles and Jarvis Security Protocol 9.1.1. But really, Tony was fine with all that. He loved it, even. It meant that he never had to worry about someone else losing interest in him because he was always losing interest in them.

So he felt quite shocked when Pepper Potts didn’t quit as she threatened to do so many times. That she didn’t quit when he asked her to steal sensitive information from a Stark Industries computer, looking for evidence that would incriminate Obidiah, his father figure, her friend. He thought for sure that she’d leave first, that one day he would ask too much of her, forget too many birthdays, drink himself into too much oblivion that when he stretched out of his murky mess, she’d be gone.

Then, when he felt her in terrible danger, not just in hot water with the Stark Board of Trustees (yet again), but in actual physical danger, he was startled by the rush of fear that flooded him. Tony wasn’t the Tin Man, despite his suit of armor; he did have a heart. He felt affection, fondness even for many people, including Rhodes, no matter how annoying he might be. And he always cared for Pepper, like a good employer should. He treated her well, gave her wonderful presents and even talked with her when she told him that she might go crazy with only a few robots for companionship each day. But love? It hadn’t entered his mind until Obidiah tried to kill him and he realized that he had sent Pepper after him. Pepper, right into the lion’s den.

And when they had—somehow—made it out of that entire ordeal alive, he had floated the idea, casually, of course, past her. Of Ironman having a girlfriend. Just to see what she’d say, how she’d react. But in reality, he knew he was being chicken and giving himself an easy way out by couching his words in the hypothetical, careful to not touch her too much, careful not to give himself away.

But Pepper always saw right through him, through all of his lies and his half-truths. She only chose to ignore them to give him some semblance of dignity, which she did with his utterly ridiculous statements about Ironman’s girlfriend. However, he wasn’t prepared for how much it hurt when she didn’t see through his lies, as if she was finally tired of trying to read him and gave up, accepting his statements at face value. And the fact that he was dying when he was lying to her…it only made things worse. And then Tony had the most horrible thought—that he was finally accepting letting someone in, finally understanding what love might be and the object of his desires might never want him back. She was his only exception to his beliefs in tangible things. And she might never know.

And that just sucked.


End file.
